Mobile communications networks are in the process of offering increasingly sophisticated capabilities associated with the motion and/or position location sensing of a mobile device. New software applications, such as, for example, those related to personal productivity, collaborative communications, social networking, and/or data acquisition, may utilize motion and/or position sensors to provide new features and services to consumers. Moreover, some regulatory requirements of various jurisdictions may require a network operator to report the location of a mobile device when the mobile device places a call to an emergency service, such as a 911 call in the United States.
In conventional digital cellular networks, position location capability can be provided by Advanced Forward Link Trilateration (AFLT). AFLT may compute the position of a wireless device from the wireless device's measured time of arrival of radio signals transmitted from a plurality of base stations. Improvements to AFLT have been realized by utilizing hybrid position location techniques, where the mobile station may employ a Satellite Positioning System (SPS) receiver. The SPS receiver may provide position information independent of the information derived from the signals transmitted by the base stations. Moreover, position accuracy can be improved by combining measurements derived from both SPS and AFLT systems using conventional techniques. Additionally, with the increased proliferation of micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), small, on-board sensors may be used to provide additional relative position, velocity, acceleration and/or orientation information.
However, position location techniques based upon signals provided by SPS and/or cellular base stations may encounter difficulties when the mobile device is operating within a building and/or within urban environments. In such situations, multipath and/or degraded signal strength can significantly reduce position accuracy, and can slow the “time-to-fix” to unacceptably long time periods. Such shortcomings of SPS and cellular positioning may be overcome by exploiting signals used in existing wireless data networks, such as Wi-Fi (e.g., Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11x standards) and/or WiMAX (IEEE 802.16), and having elements within the network infrastructure derive position information of the mobile device. Techniques used in such wireless data networks may exploit round trip time (RTT) and/or signal strength measurements (e.g., RSSI) derived from signals utilized within these networks. Utilizing such measurement techniques to accurately determine position typically involves knowledge of the configuration of various elements within the network, such as, for example, the location of the wireless access points and various processing delays associated with the wireless access points.
In some instances, particularly when wireless information and/or location-based services are offered in public forums (e.g., a shopping mall, office building, etc.), potential security risks can arise given the possibility of malicious entities exploiting the network to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information. Such security risks may include “man in the middle”, “spoofing” and/or “phishing” types of cyber attacks. Such attacks may be based upon the malicious entity successfully masquerading as a legitimate entity by manipulating network protocols, falsifying credentials, and/or fooling a user to compromise network integrity for gaining illegitimate advantage. In particular, one form of attack may arise when the malicious entity sets up equipment to masquerade as a legitimate wireless access point, thus presenting a falsified wireless access point to unsuspecting users. The falsified wireless access point could be used to present unauthorized information and/or position data to the user, compromise identity data, credit card information, etc.
Accordingly, it may be desirable to leverage existing knowledge of the behavior of wireless access points, and/or algorithms which may be used in their calibration for determining position, to provide a layer of security for detecting falsified wireless access points to prevent the malicious entity from exploiting the wireless network.